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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Awakening to the Dream 1

Awakening to the Dream 1by Scott Bradley

Perhaps the best known story in the Zhuangzi is the one in which Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly, and when he awakens he is unsure whether a butterfly is dreaming Zhuangzi or Zhuangzi dreamt that he was a butterfly. The intent of this story is, I believe, to demonstrate the intrinsic un-fixedness of identity. There is a sense in which Zhuangzi is both the butterfly and the man, but in that case, he is not really either. Having ‘no-fixed-identity’, he experiences both identities but does not attach to either though he can enjoy both.

The story concludes: “Surely Zhou and the butterfly count as two distinct identities! Such is what we call the transformation of one thing into another.”